Search and Research #133

Welcome back! I'm afraid that to fully appreciate this comic you will need to have seen Terminator, Terminator 2, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Terminator: Salvation, or The Sarah Connor Chronicles. If you've seen none of these, please go see T2 immediately. Thank you. Also, there is no www.smartlibrarymachines.scom, so please don't spend time looking. Enjoy!

Ayvee sketches...

Here is my black and white sketch of Ayvee as Lisa Simpson as well as my colorized version. She was a lot of fun to draw in this costume. I think I made the mistake of trying to make her legs a little too muscular looking, or put a little too much detail in her knees or something, but overall I like how this design came out. The red dress with the triangle fringe, the pearls, and the spiky yellow hair were the details that I hoped would make this costume work. Doesn't she look like she's having fun? More sketches later this week. Enjoy!

Opal sketches

Here is the sketch I did of Opal as an MiB agent. The first sketch is the version I did with gray markers. The second image is colored with Photoshop by selecting certain areas and then playing with the hue. This was in response to a request by frequent commenter Angie, who suggested she'd like to see Opal decked out as a secret agent a few months ago. Angie, these are for you. I had to do detailed research on the design of the "flashy thing". And yes, she is carrying the noisy cricket in her other hand. More character sketches to follow. Enjoy!

Comps and Costume sketches...

My wife is in the last semester of her MLS and this means that she is taking her comps this Friday!!! Which means that we are going to Knoxville, TN for this weekend, and I'm not planning to have a new strip ready for this next week. I do however plan to post some interesting things on the blog that I have already drawn.

As many of you are aware we recently did a comic strip which featured the staff of the library dressed in their Halloween costumes. If you haven't seen it go check it out. Based on a post from an anonymous reader, I've confirmed the costume identities of 6 of the 8 characters, but there are still two characters for you to figure out!!! Who are they and who are they dressed as? Comment if you know or at least want to guess!

In the meantime, I'm going to start posting some of the sketches I did in preparation for this strip. I did these to figure out the costume and look for each character after Jason and I decided who each staff member would dress up as. I'm almost embarrassed to say that I think these design sketches look better than the renderings in the actual strip. Probably because I could draw these ones at a larger size. Oh well. First we have Elsie as Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars. This was pretty fun for me. I'm posting my inked lines and then my color version. I colored her with my gray markers and then changed some of the hues in Photoshop. As always, you can click on these pictures to see them at a higher resolution. Enjoy!

Search and Research #132

Hey! We've got an oversized color strip this week thanks to my good friend and co-writer Jason Watts. We'd written a Halloween strip and Jason pushed me really hard to have it in color. I was hesitant to break the "every 15th strip" tradition that we have rigidly upheld for so long, but once I realized that there were some costumes that sort of depended on a visual cue, I caved and colored the whole thing. This is a super large strip, coming in at 8"x12.5", but for the sake of easier online viewing I've sized it down to about 9"x5.5". Still super large for this strip, although not as large as Optimus SCOM fighting the T-Rex, or Supermarc. So...who are all of our characters dressed up as? They represent a mixture of Jason and my interests, so some will be more difficult than others to figure out. Post 'em up! Let's see who can get them all correctly first. Enjoy!

Search and Research #131

Today you are all getting a treat! At this point in my cartooning career I'm using three different warm gray markers for all the gray areas. When these warm grays are scanned in as grayscale, they show up as more of a cool gray. I'm usually happier with how they look in grayscale so I post them thus. However, today I was really proud of how my warm gray markers look and felt like the grayscale took something away from the look of the strip (particularly the woman)so I'm posting a color scan of my gray markers!!! Please try to contain your jubilation long enough to enjoy the humor of the strip itself. Thank you.

This idea came to me as I was walking out to the desk and thought, "I usually tell a person who has been waiting for a while that I'm sorry for the wait, but what if I were to say 'I'm sorry about your wait'...that could really be taken the wrong way!" At which point I immediately wrote out a strip about it. Enjoy!

Search and Research #130

This, like many of the recent strips, is based on an actual interaction with a gentleman who took my "I'm not really a stats guy" to mean, "Please explain statistics to me for the next 15 minutes." I really enjoyed writing and drawing this strip. I hope you all enjoy it as well!

preparation sketch...

This is a sketch done in preparation for the next strip. What role could he possibly play? Tune in on Monday to find out!

eli

Search and Research #129

So, this is based on a recent interaction wherein a patron had a pencil in his mouth and was trying to talk to me at the desk. For some reason he refused to remove the pencil even though I had to ask him to repeat himself several times. When he gave me his card, it turned out that he was a faculty member which was doubly awful because I couldn't be snarky in talking to him. I wanted to say something like, "If you're hungry, there's a small cafe downstairs." But...I couldn't. I really wished that I could have been a grumpinator though. I mean, if anyone deserved to have a bad rest of the day, it's the guy who won't do you the courtesy of removing a pencil from his mouth before speaking, right? Is that wrong?

Hmmmm....

Well, well, well...what could this be? This is a sketch I did in preparation for the next strip, but who is this guy? How will he play into the plot? Is it important that he has a pencil in his mouth? Let the speculation begin! And...tune in next week to find out the answers to all these questions!

3 Years Down, ??? To Go

Well, Eli and I let it slip by us quietly, but Friday was Search and Research's 3 year anniversary. I have thoroughly enjoyed helping to create this strip. I probably enjoy reading these strips as much or more than any of our readers. I always get a kick out of seeing the characters interact, and I really appreciate Eli's ability to visually represent those interactions in a way that cracks me up everytime!

Thank you to all of our fans and readers!! We have appreciated your comments and sticking with us when we have long gaps between postings. If it was just for us, we probably would have stopped creating this strip a while ago, but for you guys we keep 'em coming!

Here's to more years of fun and laughter to come!

-Jason

Search and Research #128

Ahh...the mystery is solved. This still doesn't help my real life situation in which there are never any pens at the desk, but it was fun. Hopefully this pen obsession is out of my system now. Enjoy!

Search and Research #127

Apparently I'm still working through some "lack of pens" issues in the workplace, so here's another scenario that kinda gets on my nerves. These questions have come up when I only had 1 pen left, and I've had to decide whether or not to lend the pen. I have to admit that I usually don't lend out the pen, under the "My need at the desk is greater than your need at the computer" Act of 2002, but there are times that I wish I could demand unreasonable collateral. But that's why I have this strip!!! Enjoy!

Search and Research #126

As many of you are aware, I like to address current issues in libraries in this strip; often times they are issues that are so current that they don't show up in library literature. Today is no exception...Where are all our pens going??!! Our library has bought literally thousands of pens in the time that I've been here, and we still have to go searching all over the place when we need to write out a call number for somebody! And it's not like we're buying really nice pens either...these are the cheapest writing implement we can find, so I can't imagine that there would be the "new pen" factor at work here among those taking them. Forget about Google books, the lack of pens is the thing that's going to take us down, in my opinion.

Ok, enough of that. I discovered that my faithful gray marker is almost out of ink, so I had to do some computer colors for the service desk today. I hope I'm not letting anyone down by doing that...if it's any consolation, I had to spend a lot of time talking myself into that course of action. I really want to do this strip by hand all the time. Also, Marc refers to a previous incident involving an ink-bomb. That can be seen in strip #33. Enjoy!

Search and Research #125

Well, well, well...look at this. A new strip! Whoa! As many of you faithful readers are aware, my life becomes extremely busy around the start of a new semester, and August and part of September are usually too busy for me to find time to draw strips, and this year was no exception. My July was also unusually busy, so yes...it has been a while. So, I'd like to take this opportunity to welcome you all back to Search and Research!

I had mentioned in previous posts that my younger brother Christopher would be doing a guest strip for me, but it turned out that drawing a strip was a bit daunting for him, so I'm still trying to talk him into finishing it, but I'm not sure when that might happen.

Does anybody else get a lot of books coming in with these little sticky tabs in them? I seem to find them on a fairly regular basis, and I'm always surprised that someone would consider that an acceptable condition in which to return a book to a library. I just don't understand that...

Thanks very much to all of you for sticking with this strip! Enjoy!

eli

Search and Research #124

Hey! I did in fact get a strip up before my summer got really crazy. I go through this thought process a lot when I'm at the desk, but they don't all turn out to be professors...let me tell you! Anyway, I'm going to say that it'll be several weeks before I can post another strip, but my brother Christopher has kindly offered to create a guest strip for me while I'm busy, so be on the lookout for that! I hope you are all having a great summer! Enjoy!

- Eli

more sketches...

Sometimes story ideas come to me when I draw the characters in funny ways, such as adding a hat, putting them in a different costume, etc. An example is strip #106 where I drew Marc with long hair, and the picture was very funny to me and sort of spawned this strip. Above is an example of a couple of ways I recently tried drawing Marc, first in a hoodie, and secondly as a secret agent of some kind. The second was also a chance to see what he'd look like with longer sideburns. He certainly looks...different. I'm not sure if I like them longer. Anybody got any other costumes or "looks" they'd like to see on Marc?

It's a little sketchy...

I've been thinking for a while that SCOM needs a technological nemesis. The gnome was a pretty good nemesis, but being magical puts him in a sort of different world than SCOM. A technological nemesis seems to present more options for SCOM to bust out his CIA training (recall that he was programmed by the CIA), and so an evil copier seemed the natural option. Here are my first and second attempts at an evil copier (Second attempt is beneath the body of the message.) Notice that they're similar, but I took the first design and improved the evilness for the second.

In other news, I have so much going on in the next 3-4 weeks that the strip will be irregular at best. It's possible that my brother, Chris, a recent graduate from Savannah College of Art and Design, may do a guest strip or two. Chris is not a librarian, although he's spent time studying in libraries, so that could be interesting. I may have time to squeeze 1 or 2 strips into my schedule before mid-July, but we'll just have to see. Anybody got any crazy copier stories?

- eli

More sketches...

Back a while ago, April of 2007 actually, I introduced the character of Marc's Library Director, seen here. At that time I wasn't really happy with the design or look of her character, so she has never shown up again. I've recently had some ideas for strips involving her, so I decided I needed to update her design. Here is one example that I'm considering. You'll notice that her facial features are similar to the original drawing, but her hair and mode of dress are different. This character is still evolving.

- Eli

Head sketches...

In a lot of ways I like Marc's swoopey hair because it makes him visually distinctive, even in silhouette, but it does present some weird challenges when drawing him from certain angles...particularly from the side. I also have trouble giving him good expressions from the side 'cause the arm of his glasses seems like it always covers up his eyes. I decided that I really did need to figure some of those angles out though, so I did a few little head sketches in preparation for the most recent strip, which I am presenting for your enjoyment today. I'm not sure that any of them really work all that well...this is sort of an ongoing challenge I'm working on solving.

- eli

Sketches...

Well, due to my extended absence, I'm trying to drum up more interest in our blog here by adding content with more frequency, so I'm going to be posting some sketches that I did to sort of get me back into the mood to draw this strip. To start with, it had been a LONG time since I'd drawn Elsie, our stacks manager, so I had to go look at past strips and then I did this sketch. I think it turned out pretty nice, but I didn't go for too much detail, such as her hands. The toughest thing to get right on my characters here are the faces, so when I'm warming up I draw the face first, and then if I'm feeling particularly good I'll draw a body as well.

Ok, that's it for today, but check back tomorrow for a new sketch!!!